104 replies to this topic

[Chronojam]

It's dumb as hell to arbitrarily declare a certain build overpowered and punish it explicitly. That's dumb. That's bad design. Better design is to make the alternatives more attractive, or tweak the risk:reward of the components that make up the build. Ghost Heat is bad because it is an awful, thoughtless, punitive system.

Consider how ghost heat, while setting out to cripple the 6PPC Stalker, managed to do absolutely nothing at all do the dominant-for-seven-months 2PPC1Gauss flavor of the year. Consider how ghost heat, by its punitive nature, ended up punishing people who chose to use the AC\2 or SRM\2 as nonsensical collateral damage. Consider how you could end up launching fewer LRMs while suddenly generating more heat because of how ghost heat behaved between different launcher sizes.

That's awful. That's shortsighted. If the high-alpha long-range metagame rules the day, perhaps make it no longer so effective. Tweak health or damage such that you cannot easily cripple a mech before that mech enters its own operating range brackets, why not?

Adjust close-range weapons to get even more effective up close; one problem with the long-range high-alpha metagame is that they start dealing great damage at long range and yet retain effectiveness at all but the closest ranges if you're using [non-ER] PPCs. Brawlers need to have a chance to "make up the difference" for the period during which they were unable to return fire.

Except ghost heat screwed over SRM builds and twinned AC/20 builds. This strengthened the long-range high-alpha metagame by contrast, because ghost heat ultimately increased the advantages of long-range high-alpha builds over builds that focused on heat stability and knife-fighting. Ghost heat actively made the problem worse.

[The Justicar]

Chronojam, on 23 October 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

It's dumb as hell to arbitrarily declare a certain build overpowered and punish it explicitly. That's dumb. That's bad design. Better design is to make the alternatives more attractive, or tweak the risk:reward of the components that make up the build. Ghost Heat is bad because it is an awful, thoughtless, punitive system.

Consider how ghost heat, while setting out to cripple the 6PPC Stalker, managed to do absolutely nothing at all do the dominant-for-seven-months 2PPC1Gauss flavor of the year. Consider how ghost heat, by its punitive nature, ended up punishing people who chose to use the AC\2 or SRM\2 as nonsensical collateral damage. Consider how you could end up launching fewer LRMs while suddenly generating more heat because of how ghost heat behaved between different launcher sizes.

Funny how raising PPC heat--two simple value changes, by the way--did more than the incredibly complex ghost heat system. That they claim this is their working-as-intended direction for MWO is not only disgusting, but is very telling for the game's future.

[Victor Morson]

Yep. Upping the PPC heat = fixed the PPC problem. I don't get why anyone there would think it had anything to do with Ghost Heat.

All that DID accomplishing was scaring pugs into running Frankenbuilds even worse than usual for about a month.

[Lightfoot]

Just say no to Ghost Heat.

I would like to play MWO more, but I rarely get out of Mechlab or testing my mechs before I log off thinking this can't be right. It's just waaay overdone, none of my Energy based mechs are usable unless I boat Medium Lasers only or mostly. It just stops me in my tracks and I go do something other than MWO.

[Chronojam]

The Justicar, on 24 October 2013 - 02:49 AM, said:

Funny how raising PPC heat--two simple value changes, by the way--did more than the incredibly complex ghost heat system. That they claim this is their working-as-intended direction for MWO is not only disgusting, but is very telling for the game's future.

It is too bad that the test server is only available during the weekdays for a very narrow window of time that is sporadic and rarely given much advance notice. Just imagine if, at the start of the ghost heat design process, somebody stood up and said "Wait a second, why don't we raise the heat on the PPC and see how players respond?" A weekend of testing later, and perhaps we'd have avoided the issue. Somebody describing the what-we-got ghost heat on the forums would sound like a madman telling bad jokes.

"Wait a second, why don't we just make all mechs lives 25-30% longer so brawlers have time to do their jobs after charging through sniper fire?" before killing large lasers.

"Wait a second, why don't we just make the gauss rifle take longer to recharge?" before introducing new mechanics.

"Wait a second, what if the AC\20 had less ammunition so you'd have to bring backup weapons?" etc. etc.